EX-PATIENT SUGGESTS WAYS TO IMPROVE PATIENT CARE IN IMH

Post date: 
6 Oct 2013 - 4:31pm
The mentally ill in this society today is the most disadvantaged as one could say. Especially the in-patients in IMH. I am a 23 yr old who have spent most of her blooming youth in the C Class ward of IMH. I have stayed in that ward since I was 19 in 2009. For 2010, 2011 and 2012 as well. Each for months. With the longest, a 6 months in 2012. And most of them it was not because I have an onset of mental illness, but because my parents do not want to bring me back home but the hospital still refuses to let me go too.
It all started with a quarrel/fight with my parents in 2009. I was rather a delinquent. But that does not mean I have a mental illness and they shouldn’t just send me to IMH because they can’t handle me. They wanted me to be confirmed with mental illness so as to justify my rebelliousness. At my first visit, the doctor(male) at IMH, after assessing me, told my mother that I was mentally sound. But my mother refused to bring me home. That made me anxious and when I tried escaping from the observation room, they tied me up, injected me and admitted me in the ward.
Another doctor(female) came and wrongly diagnosed me as ‘Schizophrenic’ because the EPIP (Early Psychosis Intervention Program) team took over and found out it was a wrong diagnosis. I experienced trauma in my first experience with IMH. I was admitted to 34B and the nurses were nasty. The haloperidol injection made my eyes rolled up terribly and the tying of my body ached me badly. I was tied for what seems like 4 hours of eternity. I was so scared on injections but they forcefully push me down on the bed, tied me and unmercifully poked the needle into me. I was hailing, screaming inside.
That first psychiatric injection traumatised me. I was already traumatised because CISCO guards were called and with 6 nurses, they pushed me on a mobile bed and used white ‘ropes’ to tie my hands to the side of the bed, my legs at the end, and my torso to the bed. For 4 hours my body ached a lot because I stayed in that position for too long. I experienced an out-of-the-world experience with haloperidol – something that I’m allergic to. The feeling I have when my eyes rolled up was one that can’t be explained. My eyes kept looking upwards and I can’t control it. It’s like the black eye peas rolled into the brain. And I can’t walk properly. Because my whole body felt that I was someone else. Possessed.
I understand the violent ones need to be restrained. But I was trying to escape from IMH! I didn’t want to be or wasn’t violent! And I was already told I was well by the doctor! Does it give you the right to stop me? Since I am already well! I hate to stay in the hospital. And that warrants tying me up, injecting me, and admitting me into the ward? I think it’s pretty normal to get fed up with being enclosed! I told no one what had happened to me. And I eventually went home with a traumatised spirit.
But in 2010, we quarreled and fought again. This time, after they sent me to IMH again, they refused to bring me home, resulting in a transfer from IMH to Simei Care Centre. Again, in the ward, I was tied mercilessly. Because they thought that I was disruptive. But I was just being myself. I was tied more than 2 times. Hands, legs and body. When I got tied up, I cried. My hair stuck to the front of my face, but no nurse bothered to sweep it away nor wipe my tears and mucus. I was a total wreck because as my hands are tied, I couldn’t reach my face to wipe my sweat, tears or sweep my hair. I kept begging and shouting for the nurses to untie me, all of them walked past me like they heck care, and ignored me. Again, adding on to my already bottled up emotions, I felt more traumatised.
SCC is a psychiatric rehabilitation residence but I was the only one not prescribe any medicines because again, the doctors certifies that I was sane! I initially heavily protested that I won’t accept any other place to stay, I didn’t want to stay in Simei Care Centre! But the doctors and case manager made it too easy for me to stay there without even much talks to advocate to my parents that they should take me home. After I went into Simei Care Centre, there were fights between me and my uncle, who thought he could take over. I was separated from my family. For months, I didn’t go to church, for months, my parents did not meet me, my sister did not keep in touch. For months, I lived alone. And remember, I was 19 then, still needing the love of my family.
Staying away from my parents and sister was a heartbreaking, heart-wrenching and heart-stopped situation. My heart felt very sunken, heavy with pain and sorrow. I wasn’t ready to stay out on my own. I felt absolutely lonely. With all the traumatisation from IMH and the trauma of living in a foreign place, separation from my parents, (mind you, I wasn’t able to even touch my bed, my room and my home) I developed a mental illness. My mood became a extreme swing. Simei Care Centre sent me to IMH and the doctor diagnosed me as Bipolar Mania.
So with a diagnosis, my parents have all the more reason to think that I’m mentally ill. From IMH, I was sent again to Hougang Care Centre because my parents did not want to take me back home again. All these made my life a incapacitating one. The hospital – specifically my doctor – didn’t let me out on my own again and failed in having more family counselling to get my parents to take me back home. From Hougang Care Centre, I was yet again sent to IMH and was FORCED to have ECT – Electro-Convulsive Therapy, which is a treatment that I wrote against it fervently [Link].
I went home but in 2012 April I was sent to IMH by my parents again because I tried to enter the house through the window when they locked me out. Another trivial issue. I stayed there for the longest time in my life – 6 months. Not able to go out. With the same reason as with previous admissions. And I witnessed many mistreatment. Including a nurse taking photos of me when I got tied up. I also saw a foreign nurse actually scotchtaped a patient’s mouth in 2009 [Link].
That’s why I am taking this avenue to air my concerns in a deeper level. Here are my suggestions on how to improve healthcare in IMH:
1. There are various hospitals that offers gardening as therapy. But all of the patients in 34A or the C Class never step out of the ward, at all. Let us take a stroll downstairs, buy the food that we like, talk to people outside the ward and let us have fresh air!!!
2. Better food and leisure for the patients in C Class wards – we do nothing everyday and there’s a lack of entertainment that our brain wastes away!
3. The hospital should provide a layer of counselling services and mandatory family glue which I see the hospital being a give-medicine-and-injection-and-you-take hospital.
4. Patients need the most tender care, if they are behaving in an aggressive or violent fashion, then you should find out why they do such things. Counsel them, guide them and therapify them.
5. With that, other hospitals could allow visitors to even use the ward’s toilet, that being said, they could understand and see for themselves the condition of the toilets, where IMH cordons these areas away from the public and they could not see the dirtiness and low-class toilets that are available, especially in the C Class wards.
6. Renovate the C Class wards, include air conditioning. Which TTSH’s C Class wards have spot cooling to cool the patients in the heat of 35 deg C. This produces calmer patients, and the nurses and doctors could be more caring too. I have written to The Straits Times and my letter on getting air conditioning for IMH C Class was published on The Straits Times Forum Online [Link].
I know we have to go to the hospital if we are seriously ill. But my experience was more of a traumatic experience then a healing experience. This is what matters:
1. The hospital has to sack staff that mistreat their patients.
2. The hospital CANNOT bully patients and keep patients in the hospital if they do not want to. And if they are not under the Mental Care and Treatment Act.
3. The hospital CANNOT make our stay as uncomfortable as possible, which I see the nurses trying their best to do that.
4. The hospital CANNOT force us to eat medicine if we don’t want to.
5. And lastly, NOT forcing us to have injections when we are terrified of it.
6. We are given ECT because it is thought to be the last resort, definitive cure-all to our mental problems. But healing a patient goes beyond than just making us lose our memories or causing a brain electrico. It is counselling, understanding and psychotherapy that can eventually pull us through our ordeals. And maybe, the last resort is – God.
7. There are TOO MANY foreign nurses in IMH that they don’t understand Singaporeans and in turn, bully them. Even Singaporeans as well.
It’s not the injections and the medicines we need to achieve sanity. It is care, concern and proper counselling/therapy that counts to sanity too. You see, if a normal and sane person goes through these treatments, they would become MAD with illness!
I urge the members of the public to emphatise and give some understanding to the mentally ill-ed. We appeal to IMH to improve it’s service to provide us with a better experience for the stay of our lives. I would like to encourage more young Singaporeans to come forward to be involved with IMH, and help in it’s areas.

Genevieve Tan Wei Min (Ms)
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